My mom, my brother, and I have been in a book club for a few years now. We live miles apart, but we still meet whenever we can to share our love of books.
My brother lives in Michigan and my mom lives about an hour away so we share our thoughts on each book through email. We take turns suggesting the next read. The only rule is that it should be a book that none of us have read yet. Because of this book club, I’ve read some pretty strange stories that I probably never would have read under normal conditions. To give you an idea of the strangeness, here are a few recent ones:
Mort: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
The Impossible Fortress by
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
Breakthrough by Michael Grumley
Anansi Brothers by Neil Gaiman
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church
My brother loves science fiction and he’s introduced us to some great ones from that genre, but we might throw in a classic or historical fiction every once in a while.
We try to follow the same guidelines as a Goodreads book club by talking about each book as we’re reading it. To make sure there are no spoilers, the book title and the last chapter read are added to the email’s subject line. If the others haven’t gotten to that chapter yet, they don’t have to read that message until they do.
A bonus is that my mom and brother are funny. Here’s an example of a comment on one of the books we read:
“I struggled with it a bit at first. I think it was due to the excessive use of commas, with random thoughts interjected, which can make you wonder what the hell that sentence was about, like a stack of pancakes with butter dribbling down the side, or the way a stranger looks at you.”
With our electronic book club, we can meet and laugh at each other at any time. Then when we get to see each other in real life, we’ll talk some more about the books we’ve read together.
Happy World Book Day! The first person to figure out which book (from the list above) the quote is describing wins a copy of Ocean Echoes.
Are you in an electronic book club? Do you have any suggestions for our next book club read?
Sheila Hurst 